Research overview: bait, lure, and scent-station use at camera stations

Researchers sometimes attract animals to cameras using food bait, scent lures, visual attractants, or scratching posts to increase detection rates and obtain better-posed, identifiable images. This overview surveys when and why attractants are used, their benefits for detecting rare or wide-ranging cats and for capturing both flanks, and the serious caveats they introduce. Attractants violate the assumption that detection is independent of an animal's behavior and density, biasing capture rates and complicating density and occupancy inference; they can also alter behavior, create habituation, or pose welfare and disease-transmission concerns. The overview discusses guidelines for using lures responsibly and the importance of disclosing their use. For felids such as Pallas's cat or snow leopard, scent stations exploiting natural marking behavior are a notable specialized technique.